Geographically-linked information, such as information included in geographic information system (GIS) datasets, often comes from different sources and is maintained in different native formats. These native formats are tied to their respective GIS software which is needed to view and perform operations on the geographically-linked information. Because of the wide range of these formats, accessing and combining the data is complicated and time consuming. Furthermore, as the amount of geographically-linked information in different GIS formats increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to disseminate such information to users.